1. Field of Invention
This invention pertains to tape drives which read and recording information on magnetic tape, and particularly to tape drives of the type into which cartridges of magnetic tape are insertable.
2. Related Art and Other Considerations
Tape drives which handle magnetic tape cartridges for recording and reproduction purposes typically have a loading tray or the like provided proximate the mouth of the drive for receiving the cartridge upon insertion. The tray ultimately facilitates proper positioning of the cartridge in the drive so that a dustcover of the cartridge can be automatically opened. Opening of the dustcover permits the drive to extract tape from a properly inserted cartridge into a tape path of the drive. The tape path includes a head which has one or more elements for recording magnetic flux transitions on the tape or for reading magnetic flux transitions recorded on the tape.
Tape cartridges have a small dustcover release lever provided on a side of the cartridge. Unless the dustcover release lever is tripped upon insertion of the cartridge into the drive, the cartridge dustcover will not open and the tape inside the cartridge cannot be exposed and engaged by extraction mechanisms of the drive.
Loading trays are typically metallic and have a rigid cantilever tooth extending from one edge of a bottom wall of the tray in a position to trip the dustcover release lever upon proper insertion of a cartridge into the drive. Conventionally the rigid cantilever teeth are formed integrally with the metallic bottom wall of the tray.
Unfortunately, cartridges are not always properly inserted into drives. When a cartridge is inserted upside-down into a drive, the rigid cantilever tooth snags one edge of the cartridge. Persistent shoving of the cartridge into the drive causes the cartridge to be skewed in the tray, with one edge of the cartridge being caught by the rigid cantilever tooth and an opposite edge of the cartridge abutting a stop which projects from the tray bottom wall. Withdrawal of the cartridge from the tray is complicated by the fact that a flap on the dustcover, if even slightly opened, tends to snag on an edge of the tray bottom wall. The cartridge becomes jammed in the tray, requiring patience if not expertise to resolve. Jammed cartridges hamper drive performance and waste operator time.
Accordingly, what is needed, and an object of the present invention, is a drive which counteracts inverted insertion of magnetic tape cartridges.